Installation feedback

01-05-19, 11:02 - Views: 1676

My meter was due to be installed today. I have just had a call from Magnum to say they cannot guarantee someone will come due to an engineer calling in sick. I've therefore cancelled the installation as I'm not prepared to wait in all day for someone who may not arrive.
Up until today the communication was good with Magnum. Shame they've failed on the most important part.

- - - Updated - - -

Just been called back and they are coming just after lunch. Hopefully all will go well.

Tap below to see the best answer

My meter was due to be installed today. I have just had a call from Magnum to say they cannot guarantee someone will come due to an engineer calling in sick. I've therefore cancelled the installation as I'm not prepared to wait in all day for someone who may not arrive.
Up until today the communication was good with Magnum. Shame they've failed on the most important part.

- - - Updated - - -

Just been called back and they are coming just after lunch. Hopefully all will go well.

I'd like to offer some feedback on the Smart Meter experience thus far.. It's been pretty disappointing to be honest. Our SMETS2 meters were installed a month ago, on April 4th. The engineer arrived as arranged, just after 9am. The electricity meter was fitted reasonably quickly, soon found a network connection and was set up. This meter acts as a master meter, connecting to the back-office servers and also passing on information from the gas meter. The gas meter also installed fine, connected to the Home Area Network (HAN) and the two meters seemed to be communicating with each other no problem.

However, the Magnum servers could not see the gas meter. The electricity one was visible, but even though the two meters appeared to be communicating with each other, the engineer working with the back-office team by telephone could not get them to see it. The upshot is that the in-house monitor could not be set up either, as it needs both meters to be on the system before it is connected. After six hours of repeated calls and pressing the 'check HAN commands' feature on the gas meter well into the hundreds of times, the engineer gave up and said someone would be in touch. He also said ours was not the first one he'd installed that had had these problems.

A week went by; no call. I rang Magnum to see what was happening (I was only able to do this because I had a number for the engineer because he'd texted me on the day of install as he was slightly delayed by traffic, otherwise I would have had no means of contacting them). I was told that according to their system, the installation had been completed successfully! So one week wasted. I explained the problems we'd had and was assured a message would be sent to the back-office team, who would urgently look into it and get back to me.

Another week went by; no call. I rang Magnum again. I was again told another urgent message would be sent to the back-office team and someone would be in touch very soon.

Another week went by; no call. I rang Magnum once again. This time the agent listened back to the recordings of my previous calls and after a half-hour or so of being on hold and her speaking with various people, told me I needed to call Pure and request them to request Magnum carry out a Site Investigation...! They couldn't just arrange it themselves and hadn't told me that this was needed when I first called in. I did politely point out that it was a bit disappointed to have taken them three weeks to get to the point of knowing what it was I needed to do to get this problem resolved. Especially as ours was not a unique case.

So, I asked Pure to do this for me using WattBot a week last Friday. I've had confirmation this has been done, but as yet still have heard nothing from Magnum...

It is a month since our SMETS2 meters were installed and I am happy to have been part of the trial, but at present they are effectively dumb meters. Magnum seem to have some real issues to resolve and are not at all good at customer communications. When they booked us in for the installation, no contact details were given, nor a confirmatory email sent, so it would have been impossible to change or cancel the booking if necessary.

I respect that this is only our experience, but am providing feedback here to say that if all doesn't go well at install, it is really difficult to get the issues resolved.

My hope is this will be sorted swiftly and Pure will look into developing variable time tariffs soon, which would make effective use of the capabilities of the smart metering.

I'd like to offer some feedback on the Smart Meter experience thus far.. It's been pretty disappointing to be honest. Our SMETS2 meters were installed a month ago, on April 4th. The engineer arrived as arranged, just after 9am. The electricity meter was fitted reasonably quickly, soon found a network connection and was set up. This meter acts as a master meter, connecting to the back-office servers and also passing on information from the gas meter. The gas meter also installed fine, connected to the Home Area Network (HAN) and the two meters seemed to be communicating with each other no problem.

However, the Magnum servers could not see the gas meter. The electricity one was visible, but even though the two meters appeared to be communicating with each other, the engineer working with the back-office team by telephone could not get them to see it. The upshot is that the in-house monitor could not be set up either, as it needs both meters to be on the system before it is connected. After six hours of repeated calls and pressing the 'check HAN commands' feature on the gas meter well into the hundreds of times, the engineer gave up and said someone would be in touch. He also said ours was not the first one he'd installed that had had these problems.

A week went by; no call. I rang Magnum to see what was happening (I was only able to do this because I had a number for the engineer because he'd texted me on the day of install as he was slightly delayed by traffic, otherwise I would have had no means of contacting them). I was told that according to their system, the installation had been completed successfully! So one week wasted. I explained the problems we'd had and was assured a message would be sent to the back-office team, who would urgently look into it and get back to me.

Another week went by; no call. I rang Magnum again. I was again told another urgent message would be sent to the back-office team and someone would be in touch very soon.

Another week went by; no call. I rang Magnum once again. This time the agent listened back to the recordings of my previous calls and after a half-hour or so of being on hold and her speaking with various people, told me I needed to call Pure and request them to request Magnum carry out a Site Investigation...! They couldn't just arrange it themselves and hadn't told me that this was needed when I first called in. I did politely point out that it was a bit disappointed to have taken them three weeks to get to the point of knowing what it was I needed to do to get this problem resolved. Especially as ours was not a unique case.

So, I asked Pure to do this for me using WattBot a week last Friday. I've had confirmation this has been done, but as yet still have heard nothing from Magnum...

It is a month since our SMETS2 meters were installed and I am happy to have been part of the trial, but at present they are effectively dumb meters. Magnum seem to have some real issues to resolve and are not at all good at customer communications. When they booked us in for the installation, no contact details were given, nor a confirmatory email sent, so it would have been impossible to change or cancel the booking if necessary.

I respect that this is only our experience, but am providing feedback here to say that if all doesn't go well at install, it is really difficult to get the issues resolved.

My hope is this will be sorted swiftly and Pure will look into developing variable time tariffs soon, which would make effective use of the capabilities of the smart metering.

So in a nutshell:
The engineers are insufficiently trained or lack the capability or resources to resolve the sort of issues which are likely to crop up on installation.
(I don't want to sound like a smart a*se but this was inevitable, I suppose that's why it was called a trial - that's not meant to sound arrogant.)
Customer communication needs a kick up the backside - it's simply not good enough.
Great feedback, I'm sure or at least I hope PP will act upon it.
Keep us updated?

Originally Posted by Spike

I'd like to offer some feedback on the Smart Meter experience thus far.. It's been pretty disappointing to be honest. Our SMETS2 meters were installed a month ago, on April 4th. The engineer arrived as arranged, just after 9am. The electricity meter was fitted reasonably quickly, soon found a network connection and was set up. This meter acts as a master meter, connecting to the back-office servers and also passing on information from the gas meter. The gas meter also installed fine, connected to the Home Area Network (HAN) and the two meters seemed to be communicating with each other no problem.

However, the Magnum servers could not see the gas meter. The electricity one was visible, but even though the two meters appeared to be communicating with each other, the engineer working with the back-office team by telephone could not get them to see it. The upshot is that the in-house monitor could not be set up either, as it needs both meters to be on the system before it is connected. After six hours of repeated calls and pressing the 'check HAN commands' feature on the gas meter well into the hundreds of times, the engineer gave up and said someone would be in touch. He also said ours was not the first one he'd installed that had had these problems.

A week went by; no call. I rang Magnum to see what was happening (I was only able to do this because I had a number for the engineer because he'd texted me on the day of install as he was slightly delayed by traffic, otherwise I would have had no means of contacting them). I was told that according to their system, the installation had been completed successfully! So one week wasted. I explained the problems we'd had and was assured a message would be sent to the back-office team, who would urgently look into it and get back to me.

Another week went by; no call. I rang Magnum again. I was again told another urgent message would be sent to the back-office team and someone would be in touch very soon.

Another week went by; no call. I rang Magnum once again. This time the agent listened back to the recordings of my previous calls and after a half-hour or so of being on hold and her speaking with various people, told me I needed to call Pure and request them to request Magnum carry out a Site Investigation...! They couldn't just arrange it themselves and hadn't told me that this was needed when I first called in. I did politely point out that it was a bit disappointed to have taken them three weeks to get to the point of knowing what it was I needed to do to get this problem resolved. Especially as ours was not a unique case.

So, I asked Pure to do this for me using WattBot a week last Friday. I've had confirmation this has been done, but as yet still have heard nothing from Magnum...

It is a month since our SMETS2 meters were installed and I am happy to have been part of the trial, but at present they are effectively dumb meters. Magnum seem to have some real issues to resolve and are not at all good at customer communications. When they booked us in for the installation, no contact details were given, nor a confirmatory email sent, so it would have been impossible to change or cancel the booking if necessary.

I respect that this is only our experience, but am providing feedback here to say that if all doesn't go well at install, it is really difficult to get the issues resolved.

My hope is this will be sorted swiftly and Pure will look into developing variable time tariffs soon, which would make effective use of the capabilities of the smart metering.

So in a nutshell:
The engineers are insufficiently trained or lack the capability or resources to resolve the sort of issues which are likely to crop up on installation.
(I don't want to sound like a smart a*se but this was inevitable, I suppose that's why it was called a trial - that's not meant to sound arrogant.)
Customer communication needs a kick up the backside - it's simply not good enough.
Great feedback, I'm sure or at least I hope PP will act upon it.
Keep us updated?

Originally Posted by Spike

I'd like to offer some feedback on the Smart Meter experience thus far.. It's been pretty disappointing to be honest. Our SMETS2 meters were installed a month ago, on April 4th. The engineer arrived as arranged, just after 9am. The electricity meter was fitted reasonably quickly, soon found a network connection and was set up. This meter acts as a master meter, connecting to the back-office servers and also passing on information from the gas meter. The gas meter also installed fine, connected to the Home Area Network (HAN) and the two meters seemed to be communicating with each other no problem.

However, the Magnum servers could not see the gas meter. The electricity one was visible, but even though the two meters appeared to be communicating with each other, the engineer working with the back-office team by telephone could not get them to see it. The upshot is that the in-house monitor could not be set up either, as it needs both meters to be on the system before it is connected. After six hours of repeated calls and pressing the 'check HAN commands' feature on the gas meter well into the hundreds of times, the engineer gave up and said someone would be in touch. He also said ours was not the first one he'd installed that had had these problems.

A week went by; no call. I rang Magnum to see what was happening (I was only able to do this because I had a number for the engineer because he'd texted me on the day of install as he was slightly delayed by traffic, otherwise I would have had no means of contacting them). I was told that according to their system, the installation had been completed successfully! So one week wasted. I explained the problems we'd had and was assured a message would be sent to the back-office team, who would urgently look into it and get back to me.

Another week went by; no call. I rang Magnum again. I was again told another urgent message would be sent to the back-office team and someone would be in touch very soon.

Another week went by; no call. I rang Magnum once again. This time the agent listened back to the recordings of my previous calls and after a half-hour or so of being on hold and her speaking with various people, told me I needed to call Pure and request them to request Magnum carry out a Site Investigation...! They couldn't just arrange it themselves and hadn't told me that this was needed when I first called in. I did politely point out that it was a bit disappointed to have taken them three weeks to get to the point of knowing what it was I needed to do to get this problem resolved. Especially as ours was not a unique case.

So, I asked Pure to do this for me using WattBot a week last Friday. I've had confirmation this has been done, but as yet still have heard nothing from Magnum...

It is a month since our SMETS2 meters were installed and I am happy to have been part of the trial, but at present they are effectively dumb meters. Magnum seem to have some real issues to resolve and are not at all good at customer communications. When they booked us in for the installation, no contact details were given, nor a confirmatory email sent, so it would have been impossible to change or cancel the booking if necessary.

I respect that this is only our experience, but am providing feedback here to say that if all doesn't go well at install, it is really difficult to get the issues resolved.

My hope is this will be sorted swiftly and Pure will look into developing variable time tariffs soon, which would make effective use of the capabilities of the smart metering.

Excellent feedback @Spike and I agree with @woz really. In software terms it's more an Alpha release than even a Beta release.

I can understand connection issues. But as I've said in my own feedback and elsewhere, the communication from Magnum is poor (at best) and that is one thing they should be able to do right. It's VITAL in a trial period especially.

Excellent feedback @Spike and I agree with @woz really. In software terms it's more an Alpha release than even a Beta release.

I can understand connection issues. But as I've said in my own feedback and elsewhere, the communication from Magnum is poor (at best) and that is one thing they should be able to do right. It's VITAL in a trial period especially.

So in a nutshell:
The engineers are insufficiently trained or lack the capability or resources to resolve the sort of issues which are likely to crop up on installation.
(I don't want to sound like a smart a*se but this was inevitable, I suppose that's why it was called a trial - that's not meant to sound arrogant.)
Customer communication needs a kick up the backside - it's simply not good enough.
Great feedback, I'm sure or at least I hope PP will act upon it.
Keep us updated?

So, two weeks has elapsed since I asked the team to get Magnum to carry out the site investigation. I had confirmation from the Pure team this has been done. I have not heard a thing from Magnum so far...

So in a nutshell:
The engineers are insufficiently trained or lack the capability or resources to resolve the sort of issues which are likely to crop up on installation.
(I don't want to sound like a smart a*se but this was inevitable, I suppose that's why it was called a trial - that's not meant to sound arrogant.)
Customer communication needs a kick up the backside - it's simply not good enough.
Great feedback, I'm sure or at least I hope PP will act upon it.
Keep us updated?

So, two weeks has elapsed since I asked the team to get Magnum to carry out the site investigation. I had confirmation from the Pure team this has been done. I have not heard a thing from Magnum so far...

well my in home display sprang to life today (My wife is already getting fed up of the hourly updates from me about how much we're using ). It's connected to my meter but not the network apparantly.

Haven't heard from Magnum about my gas meter yet. And I haven't yet had a PP energy bill for this month. I submitted both readings using the App but ony electricity is showing. Will I have a new billing date with my Smart Meter. What happens when my Gas smart meter is fitted? Any advice @Marc or @Nataly ?

well my in home display sprang to life today (My wife is already getting fed up of the hourly updates from me about how much we're using ). It's connected to my meter but not the network apparantly.

Haven't heard from Magnum about my gas meter yet. And I haven't yet had a PP energy bill for this month. I submitted both readings using the App but ony electricity is showing. Will I have a new billing date with my Smart Meter. What happens when my Gas smart meter is fitted? Any advice @Marc or @Nataly ?

As far as I know your statement date won't change, eventually you'll get a statement with the old meter readings and the start of the new ones.
Your statement may have been delayed due to the meter change, I don't know, but I would still have expected a statement on time even if it had estimated readings, and a correction eventually (on a later statement).
If there is an problem there it's down to PP, because there are only two scenarios, either it's delayed due to the meter change in which case that should have been clearly communicated to you, or it's an error with the system. Either way isn't good.

If you look in the rule book, section 4 page 5 para.3 subsection 2a, you'll see in the small print: constant updates to any of the family members (but especially Wife) always ends badly...

Originally Posted by Jowl

well my in home display sprang to life today (My wife is already getting fed up of the hourly updates from me about how much we're using ). It's connected to my meter but not the network apparantly.

Haven't heard from Magnum about my gas meter yet. And I haven't yet had a PP energy bill for this month. I submitted both readings using the App but ony electricity is showing. Will I have a new billing date with my Smart Meter. What happens when my Gas smart meter is fitted? Any advice @Marc or @Nataly ?

As far as I know your statement date won't change, eventually you'll get a statement with the old meter readings and the start of the new ones.
Your statement may have been delayed due to the meter change, I don't know, but I would still have expected a statement on time even if it had estimated readings, and a correction eventually (on a later statement).
If there is an problem there it's down to PP, because there are only two scenarios, either it's delayed due to the meter change in which case that should have been clearly communicated to you, or it's an error with the system. Either way isn't good.

If you look in the rule book, section 4 page 5 para.3 subsection 2a, you'll see in the small print: constant updates to any of the family members (but especially Wife) always ends badly...

Originally Posted by Jowl

well my in home display sprang to life today (My wife is already getting fed up of the hourly updates from me about how much we're using ). It's connected to my meter but not the network apparantly.

Haven't heard from Magnum about my gas meter yet. And I haven't yet had a PP energy bill for this month. I submitted both readings using the App but ony electricity is showing. Will I have a new billing date with my Smart Meter. What happens when my Gas smart meter is fitted? Any advice @Marc or @Nataly ?

well my in home display sprang to life today (My wife is already getting fed up of the hourly updates from me about how much we're using ). It's connected to my meter but not the network apparantly.

Haven't heard from Magnum about my gas meter yet. And I haven't yet had a PP energy bill for this month. I submitted both readings using the App but ony electricity is showing. Will I have a new billing date with my Smart Meter. What happens when my Gas smart meter is fitted? Any advice @Marc or @Nataly ?

Hi @Jowl
Good to hear the IHD is alive.
You won't get a statement for a couple of months. This pilot phase is really helping us to get these processes up and running, so your patience is appreciated!
That lack of contact about the gas meter is not good. I've flagged this up with the team and your second appointment was booked for 30 April. So why it wasn't carried out, and why there was no communication, is being looked into. Sorry about that.
Niall from our Member services team is talking to Magnum about setting up a new gas meter appointment

well my in home display sprang to life today (My wife is already getting fed up of the hourly updates from me about how much we're using ). It's connected to my meter but not the network apparantly.

Haven't heard from Magnum about my gas meter yet. And I haven't yet had a PP energy bill for this month. I submitted both readings using the App but ony electricity is showing. Will I have a new billing date with my Smart Meter. What happens when my Gas smart meter is fitted? Any advice @Marc or @Nataly ?

Hi @Jowl
Good to hear the IHD is alive.
You won't get a statement for a couple of months. This pilot phase is really helping us to get these processes up and running, so your patience is appreciated!
That lack of contact about the gas meter is not good. I've flagged this up with the team and your second appointment was booked for 30 April. So why it wasn't carried out, and why there was no communication, is being looked into. Sorry about that.
Niall from our Member services team is talking to Magnum about setting up a new gas meter appointment

Further update on my SMETS2 situation - I had a phone call from Magnum 23rd/24th May to say they were aware of my situation and someone would be in touch to sort it out. I've heard nothing since. It is now ten weeks since installation and I still have dumb meters...

Further update on my SMETS2 situation - I had a phone call from Magnum 23rd/24th May to say they were aware of my situation and someone would be in touch to sort it out. I've heard nothing since. It is now ten weeks since installation and I still have dumb meters...

Further update on my SMETS2 situation - I had a phone call from Magnum 23rd/24th May to say they were aware of my situation and someone would be in touch to sort it out. I've heard nothing since. It is now ten weeks since installation and I still have dumb meters...

Hi @Spike
Sorry to hear this. It is still a pilot but I do appreciate that you're frustrated by the experience so far.
I've flagged this with our Member services team to look into.
I'ved replied to your DM too.

Further update on my SMETS2 situation - I had a phone call from Magnum 23rd/24th May to say they were aware of my situation and someone would be in touch to sort it out. I've heard nothing since. It is now ten weeks since installation and I still have dumb meters...

Hi @Spike
Sorry to hear this. It is still a pilot but I do appreciate that you're frustrated by the experience so far.
I've flagged this with our Member services team to look into.
I'ved replied to your DM too.

Hi @Spike Sorry to hear this. It is still a pilot but I do appreciate that you're frustrated by the experience so far. I've flagged this with our Member services team to look into. I'ved replied to your DM too.

I again @Spike
There's been some misunderstanding somewhere. Magnum believe you instructed them not to contact you until after 28 June due to going on holiday?

Hi @Spike Sorry to hear this. It is still a pilot but I do appreciate that you're frustrated by the experience so far. I've flagged this with our Member services team to look into. I'ved replied to your DM too.

I again @Spike
There's been some misunderstanding somewhere. Magnum believe you instructed them not to contact you until after 28 June due to going on holiday?

I again @Spike
There's been some misunderstanding somewhere. Magnum believe you instructed them not to contact you until after 28 June due to going on holiday?

They really are poor on the comms. I was working away last week, so told them not to arrange anything for week of 3rd June. This was repeated back and confirmed. No mention of 28th anywhere. There are some real problems here they need to address. Once you roll this out wider, given the experience of myself and others here, it’s clear they don’t have the systems to cope.

I again @Spike
There's been some misunderstanding somewhere. Magnum believe you instructed them not to contact you until after 28 June due to going on holiday?

They really are poor on the comms. I was working away last week, so told them not to arrange anything for week of 3rd June. This was repeated back and confirmed. No mention of 28th anywhere. There are some real problems here they need to address. Once you roll this out wider, given the experience of myself and others here, it’s clear they don’t have the systems to cope.